Schedule

*25/09/2015    Please note change of times for the Saturday events

Location

This year we will be returning to the challenging terrain of the Carp Ridge - location of the 2014 North American Middle and Long Distance Orienteering Championships.

The Carp ridge is a 30 km long rocky outcrop just west of Ottawa. It's a beautiful piece of the Canadian Shield popping out of the flat and fertile Ottawa Valley farmland that surrounds it. Most of the ridge has been designated as a conservation area to be preserved from development. While most of the ridge is privately owned, the City of Ottawa is slowly buying up sections in the heart of the ridge as part of the preservation process. Orienteering Ottawa is fortunate to have event-based access to most of the area.

This year's arena (staging area) will be at the far north end of the ridge providing direct access to the most openly forested sections of the Carp Ridge. 

Orienteering Clinics

This year we will once again be offering two clinics on Saturday morning, one for those who are new to orienteering and the other for those who want to transition from orienteering mostly on trails to orienteering mostly off trails.

Orienteering Basics and Beyond

This clinic will cover the basics of orienteering: basic map reading skills and the orienteering legend, orienteering the map and basic compass use, navigating an orienteering course and choosing your routes.

Participants in this clinic are encouraged to register for the Recreational Course on Saturday as well, to practice what they have learned during the clinic.

Get Off the Trail

This clinic will cover the elements of orienteering that will get you off the trail and into the woods finding more advanced controls: attackpoints, compass bearings, route choice, reading contours, and more.  

Participants in this clinic are encouraged to register in either the Open or Competitive courses on both Saturday and Sunday.

Extra Activities

Stay tuned as we finalize our various extra activities for the weekend!

KidZone

We will once again offer the youngsters amongst us an opportunity to spend some time in the KidZone where they will receive a special O-Fest KidZone Passport and where they can try out maze-orienteering, a string-O course, some outdoor lawn games and some orienteering puzzles! While this is not a babysittting service, it is a great place to keep future orienteers entertained!

** NEW** Saturday Night Dinner at the Royal Oak

We have recently arranged with the Royal Oak Pub and Restaurant in Kanata (March Road) to have dinner there on Saturday evening, after the races.  We are looking forward to an evening of good food, good stories, and good friends.  We will meet at 6:00 p.m. for dinner.  We will order from the menu (they may provide us a selection of 5 or 6 special menu items to speed up the process for us). The Oak will set aside a major proton of their restaurant for us.  Their website can be found at http://royaloakpubs.com 

The restaurant would like to know some numbers in advance, so we are requesting an e-mail from you, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  letting us know you are interested in joining us, and how many will be in your party.  

Accommodation

There are a number of accommodation options in the area near the Carp Ridge.  We have listed a few here to help you out.

Orienteering Vendors

O-store.ca will be set up in the 'arena' throughout hte day on both Saturday and Sunday. The O-Store is the only specialty orienteering store in Canada and has a wide range of orienteering shoes, clothing, compasses, control description holders, SPORTident timing sticks, safety and bifocal magnfiying glasses,  and everything else you need for orienteering. They also provide equipment for clubs and race services.